Bela and Lonka were assigned to work in the fields. They had hoped it would be promising to be out of the camp, but even there they were under heavy guard. The women guards, she found, were more vicious: the more they tortured the prisoners, the quicker their promotions. Each murder earned them stripes. Burman, a fifty-year-old woman who held on to her dog Trolli’s leash, was Bela’s guard. Trolli attacked anyone who couldn’t march to a beat. Bela received a pickax and was to work straight through from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon; if not, twenty-five lashes. Her arms ached, but she kept going—at least it kept her warm.
At the end of the day, the women helped position the weaker ones in the center of the formation, to help prevent Burman from beating them. The kommandos, or work units, returned to camp together, ordered to sing. A marching band met them at the gate, along with a thorough inspection. （The band was composed of prisoners forced to play for the Nazis’ enjoyment, as well as to deceive new arrivals.） Once, Bela was caught with four potatoes. She was forced to kneel on her knees all night without moving her face to the right or left, or she’d be shot. “I must have been very strong,” she later reflected. “My mother gave me the tools to withstand this kind of torture.”
Bela and Lonka brainstormed all night, figuring out how they could get different jobs. One morning after roll call, the girls hid in the bathroom, which the female prisoners referred to sardonically as the “community center” or “coffeehouse.” Dozens of women, of all languages and nationalities, were there avoiding work. After the kommandos left, the two girls approached their commander, speaking in German and stunning her. Lonka argued that she spoke many languages and could work in the office, while Bela explained she was a trained nurse. It worked. Lonka was sent to the office as a translator, Bela to the revier, the hospital ward.
The women’s hospital was split into Polish, German, and Jewish sections. Bela was sent to the German division. Though she was not pleased about helping Germans, she was happy to be working under a roof. Then again, there were three patients per bed, most with typhus, dysentery, or diarrhea. They were incontinent and howled in agony. There was no medicine.
As the only Pole, she was treated badly by the German patients, who threw their soiled sheets at her head. She was assigned the most difficult tasks, like carrying carts loaded with some thirteen gallons of water from the kitchen. Once, she was told to bring lunch for the entire staff. She lifted the tray, but was simply too weak and dropped it. For that, she was kicked repeatedly in the stomach, then beaten while lying on the floor. Bela cried inconsolably and asked to go back to work outside, where at least the trees and the wind were not cruel.
Bela returned to the fields, overhearing the Poles’ antisemitic conversations, blaming the dirty Jews for all this torture. She was terrified that her identity would be revealed, terrified she might mumble in Yiddish in her sleep. In the field, she thought of her friends, of Hebrew songs, and looked for ways to escape, but it was impossible. When she returned, Lonka, who spent her days trying to help Jewish women in the SS office, waited for her with bits of bread.
The barracks became more crowded. Typhus, carried by lice, was rampant, and after a month of fieldwork, Bela caught it. She lay in her barrack for four days. When she asked her supervisor if she could stay in bed during roll call, the woman knocked her to the ground. Her fever rose above 104 degrees, which meant she was allowed to go to the infirmary. The ward, now mixed because of overcrowding, held six girls to a bed, tucked into each other, all but stuck together from weeks of sweat. There was no water for showers, no compresses, no room to lie down. Bela had to sit up. She couldn’t find her own legs. Drafts came from every which way, and everyone pulled the sheet in her own direction. German patients hit Bela and stole her food. Constant noise, yelling, pleas for help. Bela was sure she’d die of thirst, yet she could not sip the rainwater brought to her. She clung to her neighbors, not noticing when they were already dead.
Polish friends prayed for her; some thought she was dead too. Some hoped to take her food. But a miracle: she recovered. One day Bela opened her eyes and recalled nothing, worried she’d given away her secret in fevered hallucinations. She added extra “Jesus and Mary”’s （instead of “God”） to all her conversations.